The Iron Will of Genie Lo (The Epic Crush of Genie Lo 2)

Well, get used to it, I thought. If the weather kept staying as pretty as this, we wouldn’t have any more almonds, ever.

A bunch of visitors, me included, had clumped up near the campus entrance by an octagonal fountain with an aged cement dish for a spout. I’d already been mistaken for a current student several times. While we waited for our respective people to come and get us, small talk naturally gravitated toward oohing and aahing at our surroundings.

I could admit that the architecture was a big deal. It was absolutely, objectively, especially stunning. I’d seen pictures online, of course, but even the college’s official website didn’t do the sprawling sandstone buildings justice. The pinkish-brown archways that surrounded the courtyard we were standing in gave it a cloistered, peaceful feel.

It was the most spacious place I’d ever been in. The mission-tiled roofs and dominating chapel seemed to flatten the energy of the campus into a perfect, true plane. Where an Ivy League university nestled in a city might bunch its students into hamster habitats, here in NorCal we were, like, spread out and chill, man.

The green, ripe lawns sang with fresh-cut scent. Students floated through the pathways like platelets. Over the wafting breeze I heard the faint trills of a brass band playing “Louie Louie.”

I shook my head and sneezed to break the spell. I reminded myself that despite this school’s stellar reputation, it was not and had never been my first choice. I wasn’t going to apply here.

It was too close to home. I had no desire to spend another four years in the Bay, riding the same train I’d just stepped off of. I wanted to see what snow looked like. I wanted to hear people say mad or wicked instead of hella. How was I going to evolve as a person if I was stuck in the same petri dish my entire life? I didn’t want to be part of the control group. I wanted variables.

So no. I was only here this weekend to window shop. My goal was to see what a college might be like. This place would at least serve as a stand-in for the faraway campuses I couldn’t afford to visit. I had told no one about mentally crossing this school off my list for fear of having to explain my complicated feelings. Quentin and Yunie still thought this place and I were a match made in Heaven.

A shame. It really was pretty. I felt the urge to flop backward onto the grass with my arms outstretched and take a nap.

“Stultifying, isn’t it?” an unfamiliar voice said behind me. I turned around.

Yunie had returned with a tall (by normal standards), broad-shouldered girl draped in a hoodie the size of a poncho. She had a round, unmoving face as opposed to Yunie’s expressive angles. Any lingering hope of a family resemblance was killed by the chunky glasses perched on her nose.

“Ji-Hyun,” she said, shaking my hand. “Don’t let the vibe fool you. On the surface it looks relaxed, but underneath it’s a shark pit. This place will get as competitive as you want it to be.”

Yunie must have coached her cousin on how to appeal to my base desires. “The way back to my place goes through most of the important stops, so if you don’t mind dragging your bags for a bit, we can knock out the tour in one go,” Ji-Hyun said.

It wasn’t like we had a better proposal in mind. We wheeled our squeaky carry-ons behind her for a few paces before realizing we were being followed.

“Folks,” Ji-Hyun called out to the other prospective students and their families trailing behind us. “I’m not an official guide. You need to wait by the quad.”

“Can’t we come with you anyway?” said one boy who’d picked up on Ji-Hyun’s general air of knowing what she was doing.

“No,” she snapped. “Beat it.” The harshness of her tone caused the crowd to fall back.

Well, guess who I liked right away.

? ? ?

By the time we pulled up to Ji-Hyun’s apartment, we weren’t on campus anymore. The wheels on our luggage threatened to melt through their axels from friction.

Our final destination was a condo building shaped like a pile of cardboard boxes whose former owners had been too lazy to break down for recycling. Each residency jutted out, offset from the others, painted in alternating shades of beige. A dusting of prematurely dried leaves covered the street leading up to it.

Yunie wiped the sweat off her forehead. “Did we really have to look at two cafeterias and three different libraries instead of something nicer?”

“Well, yeah,” Ji-Hyun said. “We’re talking about four years of your life here. A successful visit means figuring out whether or not you can tolerate the school in the long run. There’s no point in showing you a landmark or a gallery you’re never going to bother with again as a student.”

We entered the apartment complex and walked up the narrow hallway to Ji-Hyun’s place. Her door had been painted several times over, as if it had been formerly exposed to the elements. “This is me,” she said. “Make yourselves at home.”

The inward swing knocked over a shopping bag full of empty glass bottles. Yunie and I stared in horror.

Her kitchen was more beer can than floor. Flies made strafing runs over a tower of unwashed dishes glued together at unnatural angles by dried foodstuffs. The pullout couch that we were nominally crashing on lay buried under piles of clothes that encompassed the entire spectrum of the laundering process. Most articles were firmly in the “haven’t started” phase and were transitioning into “never will.”

We weren’t paying a visit. We were passing through a portal to a plane of elemental filth.

“Ji-Hyun, you . . . have roommates, right?” Yunie said.

“Five other girls,” Ji-Hyun said. She cracked open a beer that had appeared in her hand like magic. “It can get a little messy in here. That’s why the party’s down the hall this week.”

We gingerly pushed our way inside. I trod like a fisherman on a deck, avoiding shadows and coils that might tighten around my ankle without warning and drag me below the waves.